The price of the share of Tallink Grupp moved up 0.69 percent as 482,000 euros’ worth of shares in the shipper changed hands in a block trade in early trade on the Tallinn stock exchange on Monday.

The three stocks seeing the biggest turnovers during the first 45 minutes were Tallink, Silvano Fashion Group and Tallinna Vesi, all of which posted gains. In the rest of the names turnover was smaller than 10,000 euros.

With a turnover of 522,000 euros that included a block trade worth 482,000 euros, Tallink rose 0.69 percent to 0.725 euros.

EU member states on Friday approved 29.3 million euros in EU funding within the 2014 CEF Transport Multi-Annual Calls for proposals to finance the infrastructure investments of the ports of Helsinki and Tallinn together with Tallink Grupp. The total cost of the planned investments is 97.6 million euros

Tallink stands to receive 4.8 million euros to commission a new environmentally friendly LNG vessel costing 230 million euros to serve the Helsinki-Tallinn line starting from 2017. The investment under TWIN-PORT II is 16.0 million euros.

Silvano Fashion Group rose 0.75 percent in early trade to 1.340 euros with a turnover of 20,000 euros and Tallinna Vesi firmed 0.76 percent to 13.20 euros in trade worth 16,000 euros.

The local Estonian securities markets are small in size and quiet in activity. The total capitalisation of bonds issued and stocks quoted on the exchange stood at 2.3 billion euros at the end of August 2014, or 12% of GDP. The small size of the market means that the risks to Estonian financial stability from the local securities markets are small.

NASDAQ OMX Tallinn is on track for an all-time low volume, with turnover for the first three quarters of 2014 at 96.6 million euros, less than half of what it was in 2009.

Experts say the decline in trading volume is a continuing trend caused by the lack of new companies entering the market and unwillingness of the investors to take risks.

Kalle Viks, head of issuer services at NASDAQ OMX Tallinn told ETV: “It has been four years since a new company entered the stock market. The questions of who, when and if will go public are best directed at the companies themselves. We are ready to welcome them and we can also tell that the activity levels of the companies, or at least their interest in the stock market, are going up.”

Alo Vallikivi, head of brokerage at LHV Investment Bank, said that there are more reasons for such low volumes. “Many still remember the 2008 decline in the stock exchange and those who got burned may never want to play the market again. A third and a global reason is that the decline in trading volumes is a worldwide trend,” he said.

Estonian listed ferry group Tallink and Bridgemans Services Ltd. have entered into a charter agreement to charter Tallink’s cruise ferry Silja Europa to Australia from August
2014 as an accommodation vessel.

The period of the charter is at least 14 months with an option to extend up to 48 months.

For Tallink, the deal means that M/S Baltic Queen which is operating on Tallinn-Stockholm route will change to Tallinn-Helsinki route on 7 August 2014 and M/S Romantika which is operating on Riga-Stockholm route will change to Tallinn-Stockholm route. M/S Isabelle will continue the service on Riga-Stockholm route.